What a crêpe week!

I've just realised its been over a week when I last posted, but I've got a legitimate excuse though: I've been busy stuffing my face.. with pancakes!!!!

As you all know, it was Shrove Tuesday (aka Pancake day) this week, one of my favourite days of the year! 

On this day before the start of the Lenten season (Ash Wednesday) you can eat as much rich, fatty food as you can handle. So a dozen of pancakes it is!

When I crave pancakes and am too lazy to bake them myself, I usually go to 'My Old Dutch' - a pancake house located in Kensington, Holborn and Chelsea. It's a really lovely Dutch country style restaurant with big wooden tables, pictures of tulips, clogs and windmills and your pancakes are served on large blue delft plates! Besides pancakes, they also serve traditional Dutch dishes such as 'poffertjes' and 'bitterballen'. When I'm feeling homesick I get this tingly feeling and I pretend I'm in the Netherlands for an hour or so! My Old Dutch is definitely worth a visit, and again and again and again... 

This Tuesday though, I committed a crime and made my own pancakes at home! When baking pancakes, I always follow Jamie Oliver's easy peasy recipe. We all thought he couldn't beat his '30 minutes recipes', but this year he has. With his incredible #onetweetrecipe!

You can literally add any ingredient you fancy to this 140 character recipe, such as blueberries,  bananas, bacon etc etc. I opted for apple, raison and cinnamon this time! They are the best! Especially when decorated with icing sugar (poedersuiker in Dutch) and Dutch maple syrup. 

FYI, the expression "Shrove Tuesday" comes from the word shrive, meaning "confess". Have you got any juicy confessions? Mine must be that I've given up chocolate for lent and have failed miserably already... oops!

Liefs,

Dutchy xx

It's still a draw! 

It's raining, it's pouring..

Every so often I try to recall why on earth I decided to study in England. Why did I pick Blighty, if I had the option of 195 other countries in the world? Obviously I can think of worse places to live, such as Uzbekistan, but I really wouldn't mind if I could revise in my bikini on the beach in a tropical resort..

No, No. I decided to emigrate to probably the wettest country of Europe instead, thanks to the North Atlantic depressions.

As Forest Gump would say: "we go through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stinging rain.. and big old fat rain. Rain that flows in sideways, and sometimes rain even seems to come straight up from underneath. Shoot, it even rains at night". The UK really splashes and squelches its way through every single month! Every day the British weather conditions make me go mad. In the morning I leave the house wearing sunnies, only to come back soaked to the skin! (No. unfortunately not sun soaked)

I have accepted that rain is a part of the 'British experience', and I am not blaming Britain on having such miserable weather conditions.. But what does annoy me to bits is the fact that English people massively underestimate the wetness of their country!

When I say its chucking down with rain, my English friends believe its just a bit of drizzle.

When they suggest there's a little shower, I see the rain hammering relentlessly from a sky the colour of cigarette ash.

The only positive thing when it is bucketing down again 

is that I can wear my comfy hunter boots

and

its a legitimate excuse to bake home-made blueberry muffins 

and eat them all myself.

Oh, and it is of course blooody romantic to kiss in the rain too! *sigh*

But yeah, weather wise.. The Netherlands is definitely winning.

Liefs,

Dutchy xx

Its's a draw!

British vs Dutch university life

One thing England is doing extremely well is its university life. Despite the rising tuition fees (you can triple the Dutch fees by 7 for a ticket into British uni's - thanks Cameron!), going to university in London is  f a n t a s t i c. Not only is the quality of education much better than in the Netherlands in my opinion, also the social side of uni life is so jolly good and far better than how we rock uni back at home.

Unlike Holland, (sport) societies are an integral part in British university life. The range of sports clubs and societies open to university students is endless, most uni's have up to 200 different clubs and societies. Rowing, wine tasting, extreme frisbee, anti-war society, rugby, ski-fi and fantasy society.. name it and they have it! Dutch uni's should take a note of that. In the Netherlands we have no such thing. Throughout my first degree in The Hague I did rowing, but this was all independent from the university. 

Having played hockey ever since I could walk.. it isn't surprising I did trials to become a member of the uni's hockey club. What I love the most about it is that you represent your university in a league. This causes for a lot of tension between the competing universities in London, and this is mainly expressed through cruel songs about the opposite universities (e.g Poly on the Strand aka Kings College)

We don't have to argue about the fact that the Dutch will trash the British in hockey whenever the opportunity arises

All students are free from 1pm onwards every Wednesday so that they can represent their university during matches, after a team's victory (or loss) the whole club celebrates it at 'sports-night' in the uni's union bar. I will elaborate on these amazing shenanigans during sports night in future posts. But I could reveal you already that you could say that the actual sporting aspect of our society sometimes plays a secondary role to the numerous social engagements the socialsec's arrange for us hockey-fanatics. Think copious amounts of alcohol, lots of silliness, weekly fancy dress themes, naked calendar shoots for charitable purposes, drunken and loutish behaviour, temporary amnesia the morning after, and lots of fun of course. 

If I will ever get a job at the Ministry of Education in the Netherlands, Dutch university life will be changed drastically. I can't imagine anything better than representing your university with a hockey stick in your hand!

Liefs,

Dutchy xx

Let the games begin..

A truly British experience

Yay! I've finally set up my own blog. I have been walking around with the idea of writing about my truly British experience for a while now. When I moved away from the Dutch farm to the English capital for the first time, I wrote a weekly journal for my friends and family telling them about all my touristy activities. Obviously this was all in my mother tongue: Dutch.

For months I thought I would be incapable of writing a blog because English isn't my mother language.. But gradually over the time I swapped the rooibos tea for builders tea, and started having bacon butty's instead of my usual continental breakfast. Most of my knee-length skirts were donated to charity and I opted for shorter skirts instead (although my mum wouldn't even refer to them as skirts, eek). Exactly. You could say I'm becoming a bit more British every single day! So hopefully the grammar mistakes will be gone soon too.

Despite integrating into the London culture really well according to my friends, I am still amazed and sometimes even shocked by some of the British traditional values. You can take the girl out of the Netherlands, but you can't take the Netherlands out of the girl!

By reading this blog you will hopefully realise how Great (and sometimes not so great) British life is through the eyes of a foreigner. It will include my nasty English experiences as well as the marvellous unforgettable ones. I will  share you my moments of homesickness, and reveal you the secrets on how I dutch, err ditch London when I feel really miserable. I would love your comments on my judgements, and hopefully one day you will help me make up my mind whether I prefer England or The Netherlands.

Liefs, 

Dutchy xx